Thirteen Days in September

by Lawrence Wright

  Carter took his yellow legal pad and spent thirty minutes drafting a proposal to resolve the Sinai dispute. Then he walked over to Sadat’s cabin. Sadat read the six-page document in Carter’s precise and legible handwriting. It was titled “Framework for a Settlement in Sinai.”

  “In order to achieve peace between them, Israel and Egypt agree to negotiate in good faith with a goal of concluding within three months of signing this framework a peace treaty between them,” the draft began. “All of the principles of UN Resolution 242 will apply in this resolution.” The outstanding issues of Sinai, including the “full exercise of Egyptian sovereignty up to the internationally recognized border between Egypt and mandated Palestine,” as well as the disposition of the airfields and the stationing of military forces, “will be resolved by negotiations between the parties.” The ambiguity of the document was obvious—the framework only said that the problems would be negotiated—but Carter wanted an explicit declaration by each party that if they settled these issues, there would be peace between the two countries.

  After less than twenty minutes, Sadat made two small changes in the text, both of which favored the Israeli position. “It’s all right,” he told Carter.

  Evening arrived, and so did the rain. Carter trudged through the mud to Begin’s cabin, where the Israelis were gathered. Carter did not intend to show them the Sinai draft yet, in part to slow things down, but he made a point of shaking hands with each member of the delegation, promising that an important new American draft would be given to them the next day. He then offered an inspired and unconventional notion. “Let me suggest that one Israeli and one Egyptian delegate sit down with me for the drafting,” he said. Acknowledging the personal hostility that had poisoned the talks so far, Carter was effectively cutting Begin and Sadat out of the process. Carter, however, would remain. This was unprecedented. Even at Camp David, when members of the delegations met, they convened with their peers—Vance would meet with Kamel or Dayan—but the idea that the president of the United States would negotiate with anyone other than a head of state was hard to fathom. Carter already had an idea of the Israeli he wanted to work with: Aharon Barak, who was there simply as a lawyer, not even a member of the Begin government. As for the prime minister himself, Carter suggested that they postpone the meeting that Begin had requested for that evening.

  Begin took immediate exception to that. “I beg your pardon, Mr. President,” he said. “I have asked to meet you tonight for a very important discussion, maybe the most important I have ever had in my life.”

  Carter had been intending to eat dinner with the Israeli delegation, but Begin now stood up and announced, “I am going to shave for my meeting with the president. The others can go and watch a movie.”

  “In that case,” Carter said, “I must also go and shave.”

  HASSAN EL-TOHAMY CONTINUED to pursue Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He confided that he had been up all night, “in communication.”

  “With whom?” Boutros-Ghali asked.

  “Up,” Tohamy said, pointing to the heavens. Once again he pressured his fellow delegate to turn to Islam.

  “Such a grave decision requires much deliberation,” Boutros-Ghali replied.

  Sadat was amused to learn of Tohamy’s missionary efforts. “Do not underestimate Boutros, Hassan,” he said. “You will convert to Christianity before he converts to Islam!”

  Tohamy continued to cast a spell over Sadat that the other delegates could not account for. During the heated discussion on his porch that morning, Sadat blurted out, “It could be really great if we could swing this idea of one square mile!” When Mohamed Kamel asked what he meant, Tohamy jumped in to explain his scheme. Israel would withdraw from one square mile of Jerusalem and an Arab or Islamic flag would be hoisted over that territory. When Tohamy finished, he turned to Sadat. “There’s one thing I ask of you, Rayyis, namely that you fulfill your promise of appointing me governor-general of Jerusalem,” he said. He fantasized riding into Jerusalem on a white steed. “This is my life’s dream, and I pray to God you will make it come true before I die!”

  Kamel recoiled. Imagine Tohamy ruling over Jerusalem!

  At the beginning of the conference, there had seemed to be a consensus on all sides that Jerusalem should remain united, with unimpeded access to the holy places and complete freedom of worship. An independent authority would govern the city itself. This was very much what the UN had in mind for Jerusalem when it partitioned Israel and Palestine in 1947. But the more the Egyptians and the Israelis talked about Jerusalem, the less they agreed. The one issue they thought they could resolve became radioactive because of the conflicting religious claims to the city. The Americans and the Israelis wanted to put the matter off until the end of the summit, but it refused to go away because of Tohamy’s emphatic campaigning and his inexplicable influence over Sadat.

  Within the rising element of Islamic radicals, Jerusalem played a powerful emotional role. Sadat’s trip there had already sent a jolt through the entire Muslim world. Jerusalem was a symbol of the Palestinian movement; pictures of the golden Dome of the Rock were everywhere as a reminder of the claim that Arabs had on the city. Jerusalem had also become a kind of marker for Islam’s standing in history. Control of the religious sites had passed back and forth from pagan to Jewish, followed by the Romans, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the British, and the Arabs. Each of these powers had promoted and exploited the city’s cult of holiness. The Old Testament repeatedly asserts that Jerusalem is where God lives and where his power is most efficacious. That promise has drawn pilgrims to the city for centuries. Muslims also endorse the idea that whoever prays in Jerusalem—or al-Quds, as it is called in Arabic, the Holy Place—has all his sins absolved and becomes as innocent as a newborn child. Each of the three religions believes that Jerusalem will be the scene of the Last Judgment. Evangelical Christians and Jews say that the Messiah will appear on the Mount of Olives and enter the Old City through the Golden Gate. In Islam, there is a belief that, on that last day, the Kaaba—the holiest place in Mecca—will be spiritually transported to Jerusalem and that the dead will rise and greet each other in jubilation on the streets of the city. Because such legends are believed to be the literal truth, the struggle for Jerusalem never ends.

  These dangerous currents created a charge that made Jerusalem almost untouchable at the summit. Genuine, comprehensive peace in the Middle East of the sort that Sadat and Carter envisioned would sap the radical Islamist trend; on the other hand, complete failure would appease the naysayers and allow Sadat to return to the Arab embrace. It was in the middle area of compromise where real peril lay.

  Sadat knew that he was mixing highly volatile materials, but these same disparate elements were a part of his own personality. He had always been attracted to Islamist politics, and in his youthful revolutionary days, he had met several times with Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, a clandestine organization that was destined to shape the political climate of the entire Arab region and give birth to even more radical spin-offs in the future. Eventually Sadat served as a conduit between the Brothers and Nasser’s underground junta-in-waiting, the Free Officers. Sadat even arranged a back channel between Banna and the palace, through the king’s private doctor.

  Following the mortifying defeat of Egypt and other Arab armies in the 1948 War of Independence, the clandestine Muslim Brotherhood boomed in membership. The population of Egypt at that time was about eighteen million, and as many as one million of them were in the Brotherhood. Some of Sadat’s fellow coup plotters in the military also joined the Brothers, swearing allegiance on a Quran and a revolver. The terrorist arm of the organization, called the secret apparatus, bombed theaters, harassed Jews, and turned on the government, assassinating prominent officials. The king himself felt sufficiently threatened by the Muslim Brothers that the palace had Banna killed in 1949. But the Brotherhood survived its founder’s death.

  When Nasser’s revolution took power in 1952
, he tried to work with the Brotherhood, appointing its premier propagandist, Sayyid Qutb, as an adviser to the Revolutionary Command Council. But the Brothers and the Free Officers had practically nothing in common. Nasser’s dream was to unite the Arabs, with Egypt at the center of a secular, socialist republic. The Brothers had a similar but wholly incompatible goal: to recreate a Muslim theocracy, called a caliphate, which had been dormant since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The tension between these opposing utopian ideals would roil Egypt for decades to come. Nasser came to wage an unending campaign against the Brotherhood, imprisoning its leadership and, in 1966, hanging Qutb, who had been convicted of plotting to overthrow the government.

  After Nasser died in 1970, Sadat looked to the Islamists for allies, calculating that they would stand with him against the Nasserites and Communists. He began a dialogue with the imprisoned Brotherhood leaders, which ended with the new president allowing the Brothers back into society as long as they renounced violence. Sadat didn’t realize that there had been a generational split among the Islamists. Radical new groups were already forming, which reached far beyond Egypt’s borders. He had granted the Islamists freedom, but they were watching him, and waiting.

  AT EIGHT P.M., a clean-shaven Begin appeared at Carter’s cabin. “This is the most serious talk I have ever had in my life, except once when I discussed the future of Israel with Jabotinsky,” Begin said, invoking his political mentor. Then he proceeded to reject everything in the American proposal.

  The first subject on Begin’s agenda was UN Resolution 242. Yes, Israel had signed it, he admitted, but he was unwilling to cite it in the “Framework for Peace.” To bolster his case, the prime minister pulled out a number of old press clippings from different countries about the resolution that omitted the telltale phrase “inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war.” To Carter, the yellowed clippings seemed weirdly beside the point, but Begin insisted that Israel could not agree under any circumstances to sign a document that included this language.

  Then for the next hour, Begin spoke passionately about Sinai. He referred to a conversation he had had with an Egyptian general, who told him it would take only seven hours for the Egyptian Army to cross the Suez Canal and move to the border of Israel. “Seven hours!” Begin stressed to Carter. “When we evacuate Sinai there won’t be one Israeli soldier, or one Israeli tank, between that Egyptian Army on this side of the Suez Canal, and on the other, to stop them. And in seven hours they can be on our southern border and threaten the civilian population of our country.” It was all the more reason that the Israeli settlements would have to remain. “Mr. President, do we ask for one square kilometer of Sinai?” he asked. “Didn’t we produce a peace plan in accordance with which all the peninsula will go to Egypt?” Under Israel’s proposal, however, those thirteen settlements must remain; nothing else stood in the way of a hypothetical blitzkrieg move by Egyptian forces. Begin vowed that he would resign before agreeing to withdraw from them. “I will not surrender to Sadat’s ultimatums or threats.”

  Begin turned to the West Bank—“Judea and Samaria”—and Gaza. They were a part of Greater Israel, Begin insisted, “the land of our forefathers, which we have never forgotten during exile, when we were a persecuted minority, humiliated, killed, our blood shed, burned alive.…” Israel would be perfectly entitled to declare its sovereignty over these regions, but Begin had chosen to find an alternative solution. “We wracked our brains and wounded our hearts, and we found a way,” he said. “Let the question of sovereignty remain open. And let us deal with the human beings. With the peoples on both sides. Let us give the Palestinian Arabs autonomy and the Palestinian Jews security, and we shall live together in human dignity.”

  By “autonomy” Begin meant that the Palestinians would be given nominal authority to rule themselves, but Israel would retain a veto and military control over the districts. Since Israel was not formally annexing the land in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, Begin contended, the whole question of the “acquisition of territory” was moot.

  Carter brought up the proposal of an Arab flag on the Temple Mount. The Saudis were also pressing for this symbolic gesture. “Never!” Begin cried. “What will happen when the Messiah comes? After all, that’s where we are supposed to build the Temple, and agreeing to an Arab flag would mean giving up our faith.” He cited the Book of Psalms, 137:5–6, saying, “If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget. May my tongue stick to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem beyond all my delights.” It is a phrase every Jewish male cites at his wedding when he breaks a glass in memory of the torment the city has endured since the glorious days of King David, who established the city as the eternal capital of the Jewish nation three thousand years ago. (Begin neglected to quote the end of that Psalm, a paean to revenge and enduring hatred: “Blessed the one who seizes your children and smashes them against the rock!”)

  Jerusalem was simply nonnegotiable.

  Finally, Begin reached in his pocket and pulled out the declaration he had prepared. Carter braced himself. There was no way to stall Begin, as he had done with Sadat. The statement had been softened with bland expressions of gratitude for Carter’s initiative, but essentially it declared the summit was at an end. When he finished reading, Begin added that he sincerely wished he could have signed Carter’s proposal, but he had to represent the will of the Israeli people.

  By now, Carter was truly furious. He had suffered through Begin’s repetitive, contentious lecture for an hour and a half. He pointed out that public opinion polls in Israel repeatedly showed a substantial majority favoring peace, even if it meant an end to the settlements and the surrender of large amounts of the West Bank then under Israeli control. Carter said that he represented the Israeli people’s position better than Begin.

  The meeting turned so nasty and personal that Carter finally stood up for Begin to leave. He accused the prime minister of being unreasonably obsessed with the question of settlements. Was Israel really willing to give up peace with its only formidable enemy, included unimpeded access to the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran, free trade and full diplomatic recognition from Egypt, an end to the economic boycott, Arab acceptance of an undivided Jerusalem, permanent security for Israel and the approbation of the entire world—all to keep a few illegal settlers on Egyptian land?

  Begin responded enigmatically, saying that Israel did not want any territory in Sinai or the West Bank for the first five years. Carter had no idea what he meant. Later, Begin’s team explained he was saying that he would agree to “decide” the future of the West Bank after five years, rather than simply to “consider” it, as he had previously said.

  It was late, and both men were tired and angry. The meeting had ended on an inconclusive note. Each of them had said things they regretted but were unwilling to call back. Was the summit over? As Begin wandered back in the dark to his cabin, it wasn’t clear what the next day would bring.

  Day Nine

  Aharon Barak, Moshe Dayan, and Menachem Begin

  IT IS STRIKING THAT, in a region as intimate as the Middle East, cultural ignorance and political miscalculation have played such perverse roles. By attacking the new country of Israel in 1948, the Arabs lost the chance to create an entity for Palestine. Through its policy of expulsion of the native population, Israel destabilized its neighbors and created a reservoir of future terrorists that was continually refreshed by new wars and population transfers. In 1956, the Israelis waged a proxy war for the European imperial powers that stoked the paranoia of the Arabs and gave Egypt a plausible reason for its enmity. In 1967, the Six-Day War was set off by actions and rhetoric on Nasser’s part that were bound to elicit a belligerent response from Israel, although Nasser was blind to the consequences. Israel asserted that its borders weren’t defensible, but even so it rapidly dispatched Egypt, along with Jordan and Syria, seizing the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and Sinai, and setting the stage for the next conflict.

/>   Immediately after the Six-Day War, Israel considered withdrawing to its former international boundaries in Sinai and the Golan Heights in exchange for demilitarization of those regions. Israel wanted to keep Sharm el-Sheikh in order to ensure its access through the Straits of Tiran. The West Bank would not be a part of the offer, however. The Arab leaders responded at a summit in Khartoum with a unanimous declaration of no peace, no negotiations, and no recognition of the State of Israel. Abba Eban, the eloquent Israeli foreign minister, remarked that it was “the first war in history in which the victor sued for peace and the loser called for unconditional surrender.” In any case, Israel never formally presented its offer because its enemies had been so thoroughly crushed and posed no real threat.

  Egypt and Israel now faced each other across the Suez Canal in entrenched positions. Although it is not often counted in the tally of bloodshed between Egypt and Israel, the constant artillery duels for two years after 1968, called the War of Attrition, took a toll on each side—Israel suffered about 3,500 casualties and the Egyptians perhaps 10,000. Impatient with the state of affairs, the Israelis embarked in January 1970 on a series of deep-penetration bombing raids, aiming to bring the war home to the Egyptian people and cause them to rise up against Nasser—the same mistaken psychology employed by the French and British in 1956, with the same result: the Egyptians rallied behind their leader. Nasser then turned to the Soviets for help; they supplied him with weapons, troops, trainers, Soviet pilots, and an advanced missile system, setting the stage for the war to follow. The Nixon administration negotiated a nominal end to the hostilities, but Israel continued to believe that the only route to peace was through total military domination. The Israelis were aided in this illusion by the support of the Americans, who implicitly encouraged the tactic of trying to bomb the Egyptians into submission—even though the strategy had been proved worthless so far in Vietnam.